Survival correlation of immune response in human cancers

Background: The clinical benefit of immune response is largely unknown. We systematically explored the correlation of immune response with patient outcome in human cancers. Results: The global immune gene signature was primarily located on the plasma membrane with a high gene density at 6p21 and 1q23-1q24. Immune responses varied with a wide range in human cancers. A total of 11 cancer types exhibited significant correlation of immune response with overall survival. Higher immune response was significantly associated with longer overall survival in 7 types and with shorter overall survival in 4 types. In addition, 11 cancer types exhibited significant correlation of immune response with progression-free interval. Higher immune response was significantly associated with longer progression-free interval in 7 types and with shorter progression-free interval in 4 types. Methods: The Ingenuity Knowledge Base and human genome assembly GRCh38 were used to annotate the immune gene signature by cellular components and genomic coordinates, respectively. We devised an mRNA-based metric of pre-existing immune conditions by using the gene signature, and calculated the metric for 10,062 The Cancer Genome Atlas tumor samples across 32 different cancer types. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to evaluate the overall survival and progression-free interval differences between dichotomic groups stratified by the median metric for each cancer type. Conclusions: Immune responses have different impacts on patient outcome in different human cancers. Prospective verification is needed before the findings can be applied for clinical trial development.